Episode 79- Ideas for Día de Muertos!

A quick episode for you to give you some ideas and inspiration for teaching about Día de Muertos this year!

Links mentioned:
Día de Muertos Chat Mat Resource
Cartoon for Clip Chat
Dante's Lunch for Clip Chat
Podcast on Teaching about GLOBAL cultures
La Familia Loca PLC
Spanish Mama
Halloween Glyph Activity

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Transcript

Free Activity!

This episode of teaching la vida loca is brought to you by La Maestra loca. And now an ad from our sponsor, hello. My goodness, it is spooky season, and I am so freaking excited because I have finally published my Kakui legend of the Kakui resources in Spanish, French and English on my teachers, paid teachers, as well as a super fun pumpkin glyph activity with slides. So, you can co create a pumpkin with your students, or you can just give them an activity worksheet glyph where they answer questions based on themselves and then create a pumpkin on the other side of the page. But creating it as a class is also super fun and great input. So, if you are interested in either of those resources or any of my resources on TPT, you can check the show notes for a link and yay, thank you, La Maestra loca, and don't forget to support our sponsors. We know that we are very appreciative of them and their sponsoring of this podcast, and we appreciate you the listeners for listening. Have a great day. 

Welcome!

Welcome back to teaching la vida loca, the podcast you come to for short and sweet and sometimes spicy episodes full of enthusiasm, magic and tips and tricks for your classroom. I'm Annabelle, your maestra loca, and I'm here to bring you inspiration, unapologetic authenticity, and ideas to spark more joy in your teaching journey. I'm turning up the excitement and elated to have you right here with me. I'm not just your host, I'm your cheerleader, and I'm thrilled you're tuning in. So, let's do this. Let's tackle teaching la vida loca together. 

Hi there, and welcome to episode 79 of teaching la vida loca. So happy you are here. Today's episode is going to be short and sweet, like they usually are, and I want to talk to you about Día de Muertos, Day of the Dead, and different plans that you can follow to maybe change what you're used to doing for this year, or if you've never really taught about Día de Muertos. Hopefully this will give you a few ideas. The first idea is something that I did last year, and I didn't get to share about it outside of La Familia loca PLC. I created a very last-minute resource for them for Día de Muertos because I was using it in my own class, which is often how the resources are shared in Familia loca, and I didn't get to share it with the rest of the rest of the world, but I'm excited to today.

Perfect Activity

If you're looking for a way to scaffold students being able to speak or write about loved ones. This is the perfect activity. I created a chat mat because I wanted to have my students write about loved ones for the altar that we created, we created a bulletin board altar, and students brought in photos of pets or of loved ones who had passed away or friends who had passed away, and they wrote little paragraphs about those people. But I wanted to support them and scaffold it with a chat mat. So, if students hadn't lost anybody, they could do it on a historical figure or somebody famous. One student did it on Kobe Bryant, so you can have your students do it on different people. But what was special is it was incredibly cathartic for a few of my students who had recently lost a grandparent. One student had recently lost their puppy that they were literally born and raised with, a fifth grader. Another student was able to write about a friend that had passed away two years prior, who was also a student at the school. So, it was cathartic and special, and it gave them the language that they needed with high frequency language, to be able to talk about that loved one. I just posted this resource on TPT, and it's something that I was like, oh my gosh, is it really this late in October, and I haven't talked about this. So anyways if you want something last minute, that's a great thing to do.

Clip Chat

I also am going to put in the show notes links to two different clips that I love to do as a clip chat for Día de Muertos. One is about a little girl who, like is very clearly visiting the grave of her mother. It's a cartoon. You may be familiar with it, and a beautiful flower bloom, a blue flower, and she goes to grab it, and it sucks her down into the underworld. And she gets to visit her mom, who is an escalator. You don't know that it's her mom yet, but you wonder, and she dances and plays and sings with all the other colaberrus down there and or calacas. And it's just really, really, cool, and it's great for like, has fear, etc. You can do a ton of high frequency language with it.

Super Short Clip

And then another clip that I use is called Dante's lunch. I created a huge mini unit for Familia loca PLC a few years ago, and it's one of the bonus units that people get for joining Familia loca. It's a good clip because it's super short. Most kids are very familiar with the movie Coco, and therefore they know Dante, the crazy hairless dog. The reason it's amazing is it has so many cultural elements to Día de Muertos and Mexican culture in general. So, you see san pasucle, papel picado is everywhere. You see Lucha Libre masks. You see a little boy that's holding what looked like an ice cream, but you look up closer, and it's something different. It's just seconds long. It's really, short, short clip, but it follows Dante through this tiny little Pueblo in Mexico. And it's, it's fantastic. So that's another great clip. And again, with super high frequency language, you can use that and integrate tons of culture around Día de Muertos, wants to eat, likes, wants, runs, goes, looks for, there's so much language you could do with this.

Our Responsibility

Now, if you are a French teacher or a German teacher and you're like, oh, Día de Muertos, I don't really teach about that. I don't teach Spanish. My push, just like I did a three-part episode last year that I'll link, is to always teach about global cultures. It's our responsibility as World Language teachers to teach about global cultures. So, I really encourage you to try speaking about Día de Muertos, even if you are not a Spanish teacher this year.

More Resources

If you follow Spanish Mama, I'm on her email list. She sent out some wonderful free resources, and I know some of them are also linked on her website, so I'll link those. So, if you're looking for more ideas for Día de Muertos, like simple coloring sheets, there are some on her website, and she always has great resources. One of the things that she emailed out was a simple slide show for talking about Día de Muertos with very high frequency language, very, very simple for novice learners. And it's really, cool. So, if you're not on her email list, get on it, because she's always sending out great stuff. And that's it. That's all.

Pumpkin Glyph

I hope you have a wonderful Halloween and Día de Muertos. Stay safe. I'll relink my pumpkin glyph in case you listened to this before Halloween, and you want to use that with your students. It's an easy pumpkin that you can create with your students. It has a slide show so you can literally create it as a class. Or you can just pass out the glyph and have students answer questions just about themselves and create it as a class. I'll link that in the show notes too, but take care, be safe, and enjoy your Halloween and Día de Muertos. And if nothing else, teach your kids that Día de Muertos is not Mexican Halloween. Pretty please. Let's spread that word so that students can educate their families on the beautiful holiday that is Día de Muertos. Take care, and until next time, you'll be teaching la vida loca, and I'll be supporting you. I love you so much. Bye, bye.